How do you know when you are reasoning and when you are not if not by sensation? What form does your reasoning take as opposed to being irrational if not some sensation? — Harry Hindu
I argue in my link that reality is necessarily not contradictory (i.e. an impossible world). And our maps certainly can and do contain contradictions, some of which I mention in the first sentence of my previous post. — 180 Proof
Experimenting on myself, I attempted to conceive of a ball wholly red AND wholly not red (I chose black). It was a failure, it can't be done, by me at least. — Agent Smith
One problem with arguments from (in-)conceivability is that what are called 'private mental states' can have no significance for serious inquiry. — lll
almost no one knows what to do — lll
MV, one the fundamental confusions in philosophy is taking a realm of shared logical intuitions and qualia for granted as foundational ur-stuff and trying to construct a world from it. — lll
Okay. You're incorrigible on this point. We'll have to discuss something else. — 180 Proof
To me both are impossible. In trying to imagine a square & no square I picture a square and then picture a circle, but they both cannot appear in the same instance and in the same mental space unless they overlap, but then aren't the same object. The same for quark/not quark.Can you please tell me what exactly goes through your mind when, for example, I tell you to conceive (is this even the right word/concept?) the following:
1. Square & Not square (easy)
2. A quark & Not quark (hard) — Agent Smith
Contradictions are a misuse of language, or if you want to use maps, are a misuse of maps.I argue in my link that reality is necessarily not contradictory (i.e. an impossible world). And our maps certainly can and do contain contradictions, some of which I mention in the first sentence of my previous post. — 180 Proof
To me both are impossible. In trying to imagine a square & no square I picture a square and then picture a circle, but they both cannot appear in the same instance and in the same mental space unless they overlap, but then aren't the same object. The same for quark/not quark. — Harry Hindu
Why not? I can inquire into my own private mental states, can't I? — Agent Smith
The question is, are we as similar as we think we are or are we, each one of us, irreconcilably unique? — Agent Smith
However, what's the alternative? Every man for himself? — Agent Smith
Yes, almost. Let's say that's 99% of folks. Who are the 1% and where are they? — Agent Smith
Why are you so sure there's a you in there in the first place?
We've been brought up to behave as if there's a little self in here who pinks at a little screen and tweaks various knobs to make the body go boom boom. Unscrew the doors from their jambs, friend. Or shall I say friends, acknowledging that your skull may be haunted by a plurality of flu officers? Or are we both just ripples in the same semantic symbolic dance? (Have we plumbed the depths of what it mines to share a lung-wedge?)
'Unscrew the locks from the doors ! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs ! (Wilt Whetman.) — lll
penisolated ego gets it backwards. — lll
Our tongue tools are our greatest inheritance — lll
'I love her and yet I don't love her.' — lll
That went over my head. Anyway... — Agent Smith
We've understood the world, yes, but its destruction, our own too, is the price we pay. — Agent Smith
Try to imagine that the subject is an invention/convention so ancient that we mistake it as the single most obvious fact. 'The soul is the prison of the body.' — lll
roaches — lll
Bah! Humans! — Roaches
You're correct to point out that the this idea of self we have maybe an illusion, but a distinction that seems relevant is this: Is our self an assumption or an inference? Does it matter which it is? Cogito ergo sum (Descartes). — Agent Smith
I have a vague understanding of what you're trying to get at. It's an interesting perspective. Taoist. Toooo Taoist? I dunno! — Agent Smith
What makes a subject difficult to understand — if it is significant, important — is not that some special instruction about abstruse things is necessary to understand it. Rather it is the contrast between the understanding of the subject and what most people want to see. Because of this the very things that are most obvious can become the most difficult to understand. What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will.
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The philosopher strives to find the liberating word, that is, the word that finally permits us to grasp what up to now has intangibly weighed down upon our consciousness.
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What I give is the morphology of the use of an expression. I show that it has kinds of uses of which you had not dreamed. In philosophy one feels forced to look at a concept in a certain way. What I do is suggest, or even invent, other ways of looking at it. I suggest possibilities of which you had not previously thought. You thought that there was one possibility, or only two at most. But I made you think of others.
Imagine that it were usual for human beings to have two characters, in this way: People's shape, size and characteristics of behaviour periodically undergo a complete change. It is the usual thing for a man to have two such states, and he lapses suddenly from one into the other. It is very likely that in such a society we should be inclined to christen every man with two names, and perhaps to talk of the pair of persons in his body. Now were Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde two persons or were they the same person who merely changed? We can say whichever we like. We are not forced to talk of a double personality.
There are many uses of the word "personality" which we may feel inclined to adopt, all more or less akin. The same applies when we define the identity of a person by means of his memories. Imagine a man whose memories on the even days of his life comprise the events of all these days, skipping entirely what happened on the odd days. On the other hand, he remembers on an odd day what happened on previous odd days, but his memory then skips the even days with out a feeling of discontinuity. ... Are we bound to say that here two persons are inhabiting the same body? That is, is it right to say that there are, and wrong to say that there aren't, or vice versa? Neither. For the ordinary use of the word "person" is what one might call a composite use suitable under the ordinary circumstances.
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